Sync Your Exchange GAL To Your Pocket PC

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.slipstreamsolutions.co.uk/products/mGALSync.htm">http://www.slipstreamsolutions.co.uk/products/mGALSync.htm</a><br /><br />mGALSync 1.0.1 will automatically synchronize your Outlook GAL to your Pocket PC or Outlook's Contacts folder, something people in an Exchange environment have been asking for for years!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2004/20041116-mgalsync.gif" /><br /><br />Features include:<br /><br />• Contact details include all standard Microsoft Exchange Server fields, including: Name, Job title, Department, Phone numbers, Email address, Notes and many more. <br />• Contact details are stored in your Pocket Contacts database. <br />• Email addresses are displayed using SMTP format not X400. <br />• Distribution Lists and Custom Recipients are also Sync'ed. <br />• GAL Contacts can either by Sync'ed direct to Pocket Contacts on your Pocket PC, or into your Outlook Contacts folder for Sync'ing via ActiveSync. <br />• GAL Contacts are added to a new 'GAL' Category, making them easier to manage. <br /><br />You can download a 15 day trial or buy it from the <a href="http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=144029">Pocket PC Thoughts/Handango store for $14.99</a>.

[SiliconAddict]

Maybe a silly question, but why would anyone want to sync a complete GAL to his Pocket PC in the first place? My company's GAL has 3500 entries, why would I want to have all those people in my Contacts?

[Ed Hansberry]

Maybe a silly question, but why would anyone want to sync a complete GAL to his Pocket PC in the first place? My company's GAL has 3500 entries, why would I want to have all those people in my Contacts?
Not every company has 3500 entries. There are thousands of companies that use Exchange that have dozens or maybe a few hundred email users.

[i_spock]

Maybe a silly question, but why would anyone want to sync a complete GAL to his Pocket PC in the first place? My company's GAL has 3500 entries, why would I want to have all those people in my Contacts?

I want to sync my company's GAL to my PPC because I want to have a database of all employees at the ready at all times. I'm a network engineer and am called upon to respond to pages, incidents, etc. at all hours and no matter where I am. It makes me feel more comfortable knowing I can look up contact info for any person I need to notify about a problem or event within seconds. If I'm at dinner with my family and I get a page that so-and-so's account is getting banged on at the VPN concentrator, I can immediately call that person and find out if they are indeed attemping to log in, if they need help, if this is a security event, etc. The problem is resolved quickly, I don't have to leave to go to work or home to log in, and I get to go back to spending time with my family. :D

Also in outlook I don't think you can browse a GAL (btw am I the only one who think that sounds funny :)) like you can your contacts list, so I like this for that reason as well.

I'd be interested in hearing from other network or tech-types out there about how they use their PPC to help them do their jobs....

[Darren Behan]

Actually, IMHO the main reason is not so much that you want the GAL on your PPC rather there is an issue with activesync if you are synchronizing between home and work. Activesync comes up with an unresolved item on your home machine for all meeting requests that you do not have the person's contact information locally - even though it actualy knows enough of it via the meeting request on the PPC. I have had to individually add people to my home PC's contacts for years to deal with this annoyance. Definitely worth $15 to get rid of...

db

[bbarker]

We are a small business that uses Exchange. What is GAL?

[Kash76]

Global Address List

[bbarker]

Ah! That would be useful!

[i_spock]

FYI I tried this out this morning and ran into a snag, something to do with the way my company formats some of the information in the GAL. I contacted the developer, and they got back to me within minutes. They are now coding a fix for the problem I had. Great response time!

[axe]

I agree with Darren Behan. I have a half dozen entries at home that just don't sync. They don't bother me, but it is annoying and requires me to hit and clear the Resolutions, of which never do.
To that end, I have over 350 people in my contact list that I have imported into my 'personal' address book in OL. Most of which are seldom used, many have been added simply to shut the calendar sync up. Trust me, I'm not anywhere near that popular :lol:

AXE

[KISSONLINEMobile]

Our company GAL has 90,000 entries. It would be nice to be able to select specific branches of the GAL, and not the whole thing...

[CiscoKid]

This is great news...I'm going to give it a shot...we have a few hundred employees and if I ever want to send an email from the PPC to any of them, I'm scrambling trying to remember their email!

the fact that it does disty lists and aliases too is just awesome.

[mscdex]

Darn, thought this was about chicks (gal). :lol:

[juni]

7000+ new contacts to sync? :D

[SiliconAddict]

How much of your precious memory would these 100 synched Contacts/GAL entries eat? Or an extra 500? An extra 1000? Any ideas :?:

[SlipstreamSolutions]

Hi SiliconAddict, apologies for barging in on the conversation...but in testing we found a 3000 entry GAL sync'ed quickly with minimal impact on device storage - less than a Meg with 'No Details' and just over a Meg with 'Full Details' and it ate up about 6 Meg memory on the device whilst the application was running.

We reckon up to 10k should be no problem, but after that you might start to see some impact on storage, as well as the memory required to run through the GAL in the first place. But I guess the bottom line is we're not quite sure yet.

We've had several enquiries about large GALS... 8O...so far one other 90k as well as a 55k. We've not heard back yet, but if anyone gives one of these a whirl we'd love to hear. :)

We've been clearing down a few bugs since launching the software, but we have the following on the roadmap for the current version:

- Some kind of filtering by Company / City / Department / State / Office / Country / Manager. This is actually pretty easy depending on how complex we make it, just time to code, so expect something soon.

- We want to improve the device-side sync'ing. It's a little brutal right now and slow when checking identical GAL entries, again expect this sooner rather than later.

- Multi-threading for the PC-side app and, of course, a 'Stop' sync button.

Longer term:

- We want the device-side app much less visible, some little spinny notification balloons would be nice.

- And the same for the PC-app. Icon in the sytem tray a la ActiveSync.

And of course...we're looking for feedback for anything else that might work well.


And mscdex, we did wonder about the whole 'GAL' thing when we named our product. And although it's nice to see a Google on 'pocket' and 'GAL' turning up mGALSync...it does hit some other...ahem...rather specialist sites. :oops:

Slipstream

[SlipstreamSolutions]

Ok, just to let you know we've released a new version of the s/w that includes a filtering option...

http://www.slipstreamsolutions.co.uk/products/mGALSync.htm

Slipstream